


Rock Salt

by BlackQat



Series: Brotherhood - It Keeps You Runnin' [2]
Category: Brotherhood - Fandom
Genre: Cartel, Gangster, Jason Isaacs character, Mexico, Other, Torture, seven years, the scar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:07:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27583837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackQat/pseuds/BlackQat
Summary: It's been seven and a half years. Michael Caffee has never had it fixed.The long, thick scar itches some days, and some days the muscle tissue beneath, which never healed quite right, feels rucked up and sore or achy, depending on the what he’s done physically. Girls ask him about it, but he'll never tell anyone. It's his confessional. It's his signifier.
Series: Brotherhood - It Keeps You Runnin' [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/962331
Comments: 2





	Rock Salt

_Michael Caffee remembers sometimes, as he stirs his Perrier with a drink straw. As he sips, looking around the bar. A pitiful sort of place, really, like his convenience store, but his. Mostly._

_The long, thick scar itches sometimes, and some days the muscle tissue beneath, which never healed quite right, feels rucked up and sore or achy, depending on the what he’s done physically. Girls ask him about the scar as they gently touch his back, it pulls his skin taut in weird places. Kath traced it with her forefinger and her eyes filled with tears when he shrugged her off. “Forget it. It was just some bad people in Mexico,” he told her at the time. No one would ever know the full story. It's his confessional, his signifier, and totally private. Because it might clue them to how fucking close he got to losing his nerve. And why, after seven years away from the Hill, he has never sold drugs again._

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_

The cartel people placed Michael in the SUV in San Diego, where they snatched him off the street on his way to make a deal. Now he’s sitting, the guy with gleaming eyes beside him, in the back. The sad-faced driver, and the deathly calm, beautiful woman in the front passenger seat. She speaks in Spanish to Michael’s minder. He leans in close and whispers, “Don’t say nothing, you hear? Nothing.”

Of course he isn’t going to say anything. Why the fuck would he? If the authorities arrest him he’ll be up on charges in Rhode Island for gangster activities. Probably have all his property seized under the RICO statutes. Fuck no, he isn’t saying shit. His passport and driver’s license, both forged, are already in Sad-Face’s hands.

The guards give Michael a long look. He gives them an amiable, blank smile in return. They confer briefly. Michael keeps a chill from passing through his gut. He has a sort of mantra for shit like this. _Stay calm. Get through._

His mantra is unaware of what the next few days hold.

Funny thing, though, to be saved by a rival drug gang he would work with for six more years.

.

“Hold him.”

She’s a lush beauty, long, shining, wavy hair, such thick eyelashes she doesn’t need much makeup. She lipsticks her mouth a bright red. He never learns her name. Something either very beautiful or very Catholic, no doubt. Glowing, dark tan skin and the hourglass figure of a grown Mexican woman, flashing a utility knife in her hands.

She walks around to Michael’s back. She rips his shirt down the middle. He feels the searing burn as the razor cuts into his flesh. As she slashes upwards.

He’s panting to keep from screaming.

“More tomorrow,” she says, her voice low. “Unless you tell me what I need to know.”

“I don’t know what you want to know.”

She tilts her head a bit, a finger winding a strand of her hair, staring at him speculatively. “Yes, you do.” Her voice is flat. “You know something.”

He stares at her, ice in his gaze. “No. I don’t.”

She stamps her foot and puts her face right in front of his. “WHO KILLED MY BROTHER!??”

Her screech echoes in the cave.

He knows damn well it was Freddie Cork. “I don’t know.”

She shows him the utility knife, dark red, slick and sticky with his blood. “I promise you. More tomorrow.”

“Fine.” His jaw works as he clenches his teeth.

She says something in Spanish to the guys with her. The one guy who looks regretful, the other whose eyes gleam.

He snickers and whispers to Michael, “She wants us to get the rock salt.”

And when they scrub it into his wound, over and over, he screamz after all.

.

A week, he thinks. By his count. Time isn’t really obvious in the cave, only when they open the door to walk in and out. Light or dark is about the best he can tell. Sometimes the color of the light clues him.

The knife makes its way up his back, day after day. He has stopped screaming. He can tolerate it, by now. Barely. The pleasure is in defying her. The key to survival.

“I take no pleasure in this, you know.”

Michael’s eyes flick to the guy he’s dubbed Gleamer. “He does. He like to fuck you afterward?”

She slaps him; his head rocks. They have his feet chained and are holding him on his knees, one at either shoulder. She leans into his face again. “You don’t talk about me. Or him.” She slaps him again; a sharp, manicured nail catches him at the corner of his eye. “You talk about WHO KILLED MY BROTHER!!”

His ears are ringing. “I don’t know.”

“You know damn well!” She stamps her foot in its designer stiletto.

He shakes his head sadly.

Someday he’ll tell Freddie about this. _Nah._

Maybe if he survives, but probably not even then. He’s never liked Freddie enough to let on what he’s going through here. It won’t put Freddie in his debt. Freddie will assume he has terrible power over Michael.

Which he doesn’t. This is mostly Michael’s own perverse sense of honor. _I’m not ratting him out. Not to you, bitch. Not to anyone._

Today there’s a change. She’s cut his flesh all the way up his back, over his shoulder, close to his jugular by now. The wound is suppurating after days of salt and no cleansing. Every day more salt, rubbed through every inch of his wound. The pain is indescribable, but Michael’s not really good at describing things like that. Sometimes he has chills and fever, but his body’s fighting the infection like he’s fighting the sister.

She takes off her shoes. Dangles one by his nose.

“Perfumed feet,” he mutters. “I’d try to appreciate it but you make it hard.”

“Tell me what I want to know.”

“Fuck you.”

She gives a soft snort and refuses Gleamer’s offer of the utility knife.

The torture begins again, toward the bottom of his back. First she rakes a nail, pointed by her manicurist, through the wound. Then the heel of her shoe. Indeed like a stiletto; you could kill someone with these things.

But Michael Caffee is determined not to die.

He’s going to get through.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been mulling this over for a couple of years, since I saw and re-watched Brotherhood. It's my answer to the question I've had ever since I saw Michael's back.


End file.
